What is culture?

Culture. What a strange word. Do you know what culture is? Is it art? Is it beliefs? People? Food? Music? Ideas?
I'm not quite sure what culture is, but many people seem to be quite fond of the term, some find it downright endearing. I once met a woman in Colorado who had recently moved from New York City to the same small town I lived in. I asked her how she liked her new surroundings, and with enthusiasm she replied, “I love it here, the air is clean and the people are nice and the mountains are so beautiful! BUT(my emphasis) I miss the culture of the city.” I almost responded with, “I hear they've got a lot of that culture there,” but I thought it best to keep my wise-ass comments to myself for the most part; she was a tipping customer at my diner after all. As I walked away I found myself thinking, “What the hell does she mean the city?” As if New York City was the only city in the world. If we were rating cities on the merit of their filthiness, sure New York City would be the city. It's certainly the filthiest city I know of, and I've visited some of the dirtiest and grimiest cities in North America.
But back to the culture. Culture is a term used for, well, I'm still not sure. But whatever this elusive Culture is, I get the sneaking suspicion there was some of it right there in Minturn, Colorado where both the city girl and myself lived. If culture is art, then there was plenty of culture in that area. I recall seeing many glass sculpture galleries, and yet even more traditionalist painting and photography galleries. There was live music pretty much every night of the week, even in the small towns further up in the mountains. There were well over 20 fine dining restaurants in the neighboring town, serving up every possible twist on every ethnic cuisine one could imagine. If culture is people and their ideas, well then we certainly had that, just like every hole in the wall on this massive earth we stomp around on every day. Had this woman somehow overlooked all of the culture which she was nearly absorbing now with every breath of fresh mountain air? Perhaps it was because she was from the city, where they keep their culture neatly organized and boxed up and labeled. We wouldn't want any confusion among the cultured in the city now would we? Maybe that's the answer, she was cultured in a certain way, cultured to not see the Culture which existed and does exist everywhere, all at once. The “mountain culture,” perhaps, was just too fragmented for her organized city mind to dig on.
So we have discovered to a reasonable extent what culture is, it manifests itself in general as all of the pursuits of human beings, everywhere at once, but it has somehow become fragmented. Could there be some global culture we all share?
Cultured. What does it mean to be cultured? Let's say just for a moment that you were a glass of milk, and you were cultured. You actually would not be a glass of milk, you would be yogurt. So to become cultured something must be added to you. If you were milk, this would be the proper bacteria and presto! you've got cultured milk. Seeing as yogurt is beneficial I suppose we could draw an analogy that there are good ways of becoming cultured as a human being, when the proper beneficial ideas, music, food and people are introduced in to your life, within your diaspora. You could then become quite refined, culturally. This word culture, and its derivatives are starting to sound increasingly absurd and abstract, which is just what I was hoping for.
Let's side-step for a moment and examine a common pathology laboratory test, the strep throat culture. This is is certainly not the type of culture of which the city-girl gone snow-bunny was referring to, although this type of culture may hold the key to a very succinct understanding of what true Culture is. A common strep throat culture test begins with a nurse or doctor sticking a Titanic-sized Q-tip down your throat, damn near provoking you to vomit directly on to said doctor or nurse. The Q-tip is then transported to a laboratory where it is examined, by highly-trained eyes, under a powerful microscope to see if any opportunistic Streptococci bacteria have set up an infection in your respiratory tract. So, as with yogurt, the streptococci culture deals with bacteria, but of a less friendly variety. Even though these bacteria can make you quite ill, illness is also a natural part of our existence, and with each victory over a sickness we become stronger, we are in some way rewarded for our struggle.
And so now, as the sun rises above the horizon, we too see the true meaning of culture emerging from its fragmented state. With the streptococci culture, as well as with cultured milk, it is the process of becoming something new and different that has been dubbed culture. And so our cultures are actually complex processes, always evolving and taking new form, but it is the rigidly “cultured” who fail to see the Culture around them at all times. Our cultures overlap and constantly afford us deeper insights in to who we are, and provide a mirror for seeing ourselves, for seeing what we are in the process of becoming, and for seeing that we add goodness and love to global culture, so that our all of our uniqueness and beauty may continue to help others become more beautiful and caring with time. And above all, culture, at its finest, is a tool to make us all healthy, intelligent, loving and delicious creatures, in step with the divine consciousness which animates us all.